Someone has asked how I title my articles and books, and I have to confess – it’s a little embarrassing because it’s so simple.

Let me tell you a story. Back in 1985, the evening after my father had passed away, Kevin took our daughter and me down on the San Antonio Riverwalk to listen to our favorite singer, Mike Clancey, at an intimate club. (Mike still plays all around the city.) That night, seeing my swollen, tear-washed face, he sang beautiful, original songs in an attempt to comfort me. When we left the club, I gave our daughter a couple of bucks and told her, “Please, go tip the piano man.”

No sooner had those words come out of my mouth than I realized that was the perfect title for a suspense novel. Had I written such a novel? Nope. Did I have a clue what it would be about if I did write it? Nope. But…no problem. I wrote the title down in a small notebook I always carried with me and jammed it back into my purse.

Many years later, I completed that novel and The Wild Rose Press released it in 2024. And, yes. The title, TIP THE PIANO MAN, is perfect for the story.

My novel WHISPERS THROUGH TIME was published by The Wild Rose Press in 2021 and got its name in an equally bizarre fashion. That title came to me in 2000 as I stood beside the Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I shivered in an early September chill as I imagined the brutal slaughter of Indian women, children, and elders that had occurred there in 1890. As a light breeze murmured past my ears, I kept hearing, almost like a sigh on the wind, “Whispers through time…whispers through time…”

Once again, although I didn’t yet know the story, I had the title. I didn’t begin the book for many more years.

The novel I’m working on now, the second book in my WHISPERS THROUGH TIME Series, may be called JOURNEY OF THE HEART – words from a line of dialogue in a documentary I recently watched. I immediately wrote those four words down in my notebook for no reason I could figure out then. 

But it makes perfect sense to me now. When I finish the book, I’ll share with you exactly why. Or…just saying...maybe you’ll want to buy it…